Ruth Hartley

Ruth was born on October 31st 1943 to Alfred Stephen London Hartley and Muriel Mavis Hartley (née Burton) in Salisbury (now Harare) in what was the British colony of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. She spent her childhood in Zimbabwe before moving to South Africa in the early 60s to study art. After contravening apartheid laws, she sought asylum in London, where she studied sociology at the London School of Economics. In 1972, she moved to Zambia, where she continued to live with her family for 22 years.[1][2]

Ruth has held many exhibitions of her art work, starting in Zambia in 1980, and subsequently in the UK and France. Her painting, The Bombing of Chinkumbi Camp, is in the Zambia National Museum. In 1984 Ruth was invited to become Managing Director of the Mpapa Gallery, founded in Lusaka by Joan Pilcher and Heather Montgomerie as the first gallery in Zambia promoting the work of Zambian artists. She returned to the UK in 1994 to practice and teach art.[3]

As of 2021, she lives in a rural village in South-West France with her husband John. She continues to write and paint.[4]

• (1980), Ruth Bush, One-Woman Show, Exhibition, Mpapa Gallery, Lusaka
• (1989) Zambia 25 Years on the Frontline, Catalogue, The Africa Centre, London
• (2004), Open Studios, Cambridge, Catalogue, p.9
• (2005), RaItz, Leper Chapel, Cambridge
• (2007), with Hamera, K., M’Other Art: Fame. God, and Women. Deconstructing Damien Hirst., St Peter’s Chapel, Cambridge
• (2008), with Hamera, K., Finding Fathers New Hall, Cambridge
• (2016), Corpus at Peleyre Gallery, St Lanne, France

• Borm, P., (November 20, 2005), Ruth Hartley: The Fugitive from Rhodesia, Art Beat, The Weekend Mail, Lusaka.
• Bruce, A., (2018), International Contemporaneity and the Third Havana Bienal, What is Critical Curating? / Qu’est-ce que le commissariat engagé?, Revue d'art Canadienne / Canadian Art Revue, Association des universités d’art du Canada / Universities’ Art Association of Canada, Arnprior, Ont. 43, 2, pp. 25-33.
• Ellison G ., (2004) Art in Zambia, Bookworld Publishers, Lusaka
• Guez, N. (ed), (1994) Mpapa Gallery, L’Art Africain Contemporain, Edition 1992-1994, Association Dialogue entre les Cultures, p 235.
• Hartley, R., as Bush D. Ruth, (1992), ‘The Necessity of Creativity: Zambian Artists, Tradition, Creativity and the Rest of the World’, in Zambian Legislation and Practice in Relation to the Preservation of Cultural Property (ed. Zaucha, G), April 1992, Zambia National Committee of the International Council of Museums, Lusaka, pp. 57-62
• MacMillan H., (1997), The Life and Art of Stephen Kappata, African Arts, Los Angeles, Vol. 30, 1, Winter 1997, pp. 20-31
• MacMillan, H , and Shapiro, F., (2017) Zion in Africa, IB Tauris, London, pp 275 and 281
• Mwenya C, (January 10, 2020), Ruth, Cynthia reflect on Mpapa Gallery, Art Yak,, The Weekend Mail, Lusaka.
• New Art from Zambia, (1990) Art from The Frontline, Frontline States/Karia Press, London,
• 'Obituary: Landeg White,1940-2017', (3 April 2018) Journal of Southern African Studies, 44, pp. 531-535
• Vladimir Shubin and Daria Zelenova (eds),Oliver Tambo and Kenneth Kaunda: A brief history, (2018) South Africa: Pages of History and Contemporary Politics (Moscow: Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Science), pp. 8-14.

• Official website